Irrelevant. That's kind of like saying "Yes, I am breaking the law, but I was only borrowing, not stealing it. I fully intend to give the bread back after I eat it." It's still illegal, and making that argument makes you look like an fascist claiming its not a 'real job', it's just something I pay them for working for me.

There is no "I don't expect my employees to earn a living from the amount I pay them" exception. There are exceptions for family, charity, and internships (and a few stupid ones for farm work). That's about it. None of those apply.

Amen. That's exactly what I thought when I read the details of this (non-) "story".

The US government has chosen to offer these bonds for its own reasons. One might argue whether the government should be raising money this way, but they (presumably) chose to do that and offer enough of a payout to make it worth investors' time and money.

As you said, that's how it bloody works! Apple just happens to be one of the companies that has taken them up on that.

There's plenty to criticise about Apple, both with their overpriced, walled garden devices, and how they manage their tax (dodging) affairs, but to contrive their investment- and ignore everyone else's- in government bonds that are specifically *meant* to work like this as a "story" is obvious clickbait BS.

I go and see a movie in the theater based on whether I think it will benefit from the big screen experience or whether I'd rather be at home watching in the comfort of my den on the 60 " with surround sound having a beer and a vaping a number or two. I've long since lost the urge to rush and see a movie the first night out or wait in line like I did when the empire struck back...

There is already a setting for metered connection which drastically reduces the amount of traffic. I'd imagine that function would be invoked when on a data capped connection. I'm still unwilling to buy my data plan through the M$ store, especially when I already have one connected to my existing phone. It is just plain retarded that the US doesn't allows phones to be locked to a particular carrier. Somehow no matter what the industry and the FCC tout it doesn't seem to be in the users' interest in any way shape or form...

All these facilities exist on plenty of devices right now. The only draw of the official ones is precisely that - they're 'official'. If you don't care about that, you've already got a myriad of ways of emulating everything.

Fascism/fæzm/ is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism[1][2] that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe, influenced by national syndicalism. Fascism originated in Italy during World War I and spread to other European countries. Fascism opposes liberalism, Marxism and anarchism and is usually placed on the far-right within the traditional left–right spectrum.[3][4]...

One common definition of the term focuses on three concepts: the fascist negations of anti-liberalism, anti-communism and anti-conservatism; nationalist authoritarian goals of creating a regulated economic structure to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture; and a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth and charismatic leadership.[25][26][27] According to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has historically attacked communism, conservatism and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far right.[28]

Roger Griffin describes fascism as "a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultranationalism".[29] Griffin describes the ideology as having three core components: "(i) the rebirth myth, (ii) populist ultra-nationalism and (iii) the myth of decadence".[30] Fascism is "a genuinely revolutionary, trans-class form of anti-liberal, and in the last analysis, anti-conservative nationalism" built on a complex range of theoretical and cultural influences. He distinguishes an inter-war period in which it manifested itself in elite-led but populist "armed party" politics opposing socialism and liberalism and promising radical politics to rescue the nation from decadence.[31]...

Some scholars consider fascism to be right-wing because of its social conservatism and authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.[42][43] Roderick Stackelberg places fascism—including Nazism, which he says is "a radical variant of fascism"—on the political right, explaining that, "The more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be."[44]

Italian Fascism gravitated to the right in the early 1920s.[45][46] A major element of fascist ideology that has been deemed to be far-right is its stated goal to promote the right of a supposedly superior people to dominate, while purging society of supposedly inferior elements.[47]

Benito Mussolini in 1919 described fascism as a movement that would strike "against the backwardness of the right and the destructiveness of the left".[48][49] Later, the Italian Fascists described their ideology as right-wing in the political program The Doctrine of Fascism, stating: "We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right,' a fascist century."[50][51] Mussolini stated that fascism's position on the political spectrum was not a serious issue to fascists...

Fascism is what we today call the "alt-right" - right-populism. The greatest enemy of fascism is those who prefer, support and embrace diversity - what the alt-right calls "cucks". Fascists seek a return to the "good old days", some sort of lost "days of glory", where "traditional" values reigned, while simultaneously rejecting the globalism and the focus on the upper classes that are embraced by many other right-wing movements. Because of the populism aspects, they can sometimes find common ground with left-populists on measures against globalism and support for the working class - while simultaneously despising them as "cucks" who are ruining society by embracing ((( insert list of "problematic" social groups here ))).

Google's an easy target; this is hardly the first time. Anyone here seen Ex Machina? Plot summary: "Sergey Brin's home pet project is to put Google's neural nets into robots, what could go wrong?". They don't call him Sergey Brin and they don't call the company Google, but they don't exactly hide their basis either.

Russian government officials had contacts with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team, a senior Russian diplomat said Thursday, in a report that could reopen scrutiny over the Kremlin’s role in the president-elect’s bitter race against Hillary Clinton....

"Obviously, we know most of the people from his entourage,” Rybakov said. “ I cannot say that all of them but quite a few have been staying in touch with Russian representatives.”

I'll repeat for emphasis: staying in touch with most of his entourage during the campaign. And what did they have to talk about?

Markov also said it would mean less American backing for “the terroristic junta in Ukraine”. He denied allegations of Russian interference in the election, but said “maybe we helped a bit with WikiLeaks.”

The Obama administration accused Russian authorities of hacking Democratic party emails that were leaked to WikiLeaks. Putin has previously dismissed as “nonsense” claims of Russian interference.

HVDC lines have one big problem against them, cost. These wires cost money. The losses may be minimal on paper but they also add up over time.

I'm going to try the peer-reviewed study in Nature that I read on the subject, which determined that they save nearly four times as much as they cost.

(I've also done back of a napkin calculations, and ended up with a number well less than the Nature estimate)

This is compounded by the issue that wind and solar are not cheap.

Once upon a time that was true. Not any more. Even solar, which used to be playing catchup with wind, way behind, is now coming in at some crazy low cost figures, like the $1/W plant that just opened in India, which is bloody nuts.

Not even going to bring the conversation into the costs of dumping pollution into the environment. Or the costs and consequences of having to have huge amounts of cooling water (and the curtailments you have to do during droughts). Or geopolitical issues.

r just to avoid the "N" word... nuclear.

Yeah, if you have $10+/W just to spend on construction, not even counting operations and decommissioning or the government-provided catastrophic accident insurance (which no private industry would ever put themselves on the line for - Fukushima's now estimated at $200B). And of course which uses even more cooling water than fossil fuels. And if you like having to estimate future power supply and demand 10-20 years into the future before your plant even comes online.

K Street loves nuclear. Wall Street, not so much.

We've seen government subsidies for wind and solar power going on for decades and little to show for it

You have to be joking. First - beating around the bush here - wind subsidies are not that great, and more to the point, the constant year-to-year uncertainty on the PTC has been a big hindrance to the industry. But more to the point, wind has gone from absurdly expensive to very cheap (as low as 2,5 cents per kWh in 2014), growing with an average annual 30% rate of growth for 10 years. Last year wind made up 41% of new nameplate generation and solar 26%.

Whether you want wind and solar or not, they're happening. They've gotten too cheap to stop. You'd have to actively try to stop them with punative taxation policies at this point if you wanted to stop wind and solar's percentage of the grid from growing.

That's not exactly true. RMCC is multi-node. But that's rare, and it's a lot more complicated. You're right that as a general rule, they're point to point - aka, move lots of power a long distance, then fan it out to local AC grids.